--Who (or what) has taught you more valuable lessons: your family, your friends, your teachers, or your mistakes?
--What lessons have you learned from each, and how did you learn them? Which of these are most important to your present and/or future self?
--What is your meaning of life? (No, really)
--How have you come to this conclusion? Who or what informs and influences your answer?
--Have you ever experienced a time of personal crisis or distress?
--What was it (if you're comfortable writing about it)? How did you cope with it? Who or what did you turn to for help?
Analytical/Structural Questions and Focus
-How does Hesse use figurative, poetic, structural, and rhetorical devices to convey the effects of Siddhartha's experiences?
For example, any of the following and more: the novella's organizational structure (Two parts, consisting of the first of four chapters, the second of eight chapters) and its connection with Eastern philosophies; water symbolism; syntactical structures; diction; use of simile and hyperbole; use of imagery, and so on.
-What (and how) do the foil characters in the novella reveal about Siddhartha?
-Analyze the novella as a bildungsroman and through Jungian / Archetypal critical lens
Siddhartha
Discussion/Guiding Questions
--Who (or what) has taught you more valuable lessons: your family, your friends, your teachers, or your mistakes?
--What lessons have you learned from each, and how did you learn them? Which of these are most important to your present and/or future self?
--What is your meaning of life? (No, really)
--How have you come to this conclusion? Who or what informs and influences your answer?
--Have you ever experienced a time of personal crisis or distress?
--What was it (if you're comfortable writing about it)? How did you cope with it? Who or what did you turn to for help?
Analytical/Structural Questions and Focus
-How does Hesse use figurative, poetic, structural, and rhetorical devices to convey the effects of Siddhartha's experiences?
-What (and how) do the foil characters in the novella reveal about Siddhartha?
-Analyze the novella as a bildungsroman and through Jungian / Archetypal critical lens